Living in a smart city

Dr. Gabriela Avram

Outline

p Smart cities vs. smart citizens p Civic technologies p Public involvement and crowdsourcing

What is a Smart City?p How a city performs depends not only on the city's

physical infrastructure but also on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure.

p The Smart City" concept - an attempt to bring together modern urban production factors in a common framework and to emphasize the growing importance of ICTs, social and environmental capital in assessing the competitiveness of cities.

p Previously used terms –digital cities, intelligent cities.

The Smart City conceptp top-down approach p Two different perspectives:

■ US – technology-centric (IBM, Cisco, Siemens) ■ Europe & Asia –led by governments and motivated

by an ambition to build green, sustainable cities p Big Data – generating data at every step p Who uses it? Who has access to it?

Definitionp A smart city is an urban area that uses different

types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services. (McLaren&Agyeman, 2015)

Smart City Critiquep Adam Greenfield sees a "deep conceptual problem with the

smart city at virtually every level." ( Greenfield, 2013) p the vision and ideology of "smart city" is mainly promoted

by large technology vendors like Cisco, IBM, Siemens, Hitachi, and Microsoft, among others.

p a fairly major discourse in urbanism is authored by private enterprises

How can we make a city smart?p Reliable telecommunications infrastructure p Sensors and actuators to measure and

control: ■ Traffic, roads infrastructure ■ mobility, public transport ■ water, gas, energy flows

p Collecting data from citizens p Involving citizens in co-design and co-

creation

What is important here:A smart city (also community, business cluster, urban agglomeration or region) uses IT to: p Make more efficient use of physical infrastructure (roads,

built environment and other physical assets) through artificial intelligence and data analytics

p Engage effectively with local people in local governance and decision by use of open innovation processes; emphasis placed on citizen participation and co-design.

p Learn, adapt and innovate and thereby respond more effectively and promptly to changing circumstances

+CityxChangep 5 years EU project p 7 cities: Limerick and Trondheim lighthouse

cities; 5 other- following cities p Building positive energy blocks p Supporting smart mobility p http://cityxchange.eu/what-is-a-smart-city/

Smarter citizens, smarter communities

p Bottom up DIY urbanism p open code, open data, do-it-yourself

philosophy and citizen participation p User-centric interfaces and controls

OpenStreetMap.org

Civic technologiesp Civic technology is technology (mainly

information technology) that enables engagement or participation of the public for stronger development, enhancing citizen communications, improving government infrastructure, and generally improving the public good.

Examples of bottom-up projects■ Smart Citizen (a kit containing sensors for measuring

environmental indicators and connecting via the online platform Cosm) –FabLab Barcelona

■ DataCitizenDrivenCity- MediaLab Prado Source: http://lab.cccb.org/en/smart-citizens-in-the-data-metropolis/

After the Fukushima disaster- the Tokyo hackerspace built cheap Geiger counters

■ SafeCast gave away DIY Geiger Counters to people to travel with all over the world, which automatically upload all the data collected to an online database, open and free for anyone to use.

Source:TEDx Brussels talk – Mitch Altman -The hackerspace movement -http://www.youtube.com/embed/WkiX7R1-kaY

Ushahidip Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili p It was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the

post-election violence in 2008 p crowdsourcing for social activism and public accountability p "activist mapping"—the combination of social activism, citizen

journalism and geospatial information. p Ushahidi enables local observers to submit reports using their

mobile phones or the internet, while simultaneously creating a temporal and geospatial archive of events.

p The platform is often used for crisis response, human rights

reporting, and election monitoring.

Fix my Street

Cycle Atlanta

Project of the Participatory Publics Lab at Georgia Tech

Open Datap “Open data is a practice requiring that certain data are freely

available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

p The government is opening up its data for other people to reuse. This is only about non-personal, non-sensitive data information like the list of schools, crime rates or the performance of your council.

p Open data gives us a window into how our government operates so we can enhance its services, help build on its analysis and, when necessary, hold it to account. Data also powers our economy, better information and data can mean more efficient services, higher productivity, and more informed choices. “

Source: OpenData.ie FAQs

Dublinked

Ireland’s Open Data Portal

p Planning permission applications -Mypp.ie

Example: HittheRoad.iep Polling Stations dataset was

released on Fingal Open Data- 2011

p Hit the Road incorporated the data into their website.Hit The Road is a public transport journey-planning service, which you can use to find directions in and around Dublin.

p launched in May 2010, and supports Dublin Bus, Luas and DART

KildareStreet.com

Open Government Partnership

OGP Ireland Action Planp Increase citizen participation locally p Citizen engagement in local authority

budgetary process p Maximize young people’s participation

in/understanding of civic life p Customer improvements for citizens

through technology

Crowdsourcingp a specific sourcing model in

which individuals or organizations use contributions from Internet users to obtain needed services or ideas.

p 2005 - crowd + outsourcing. p Crowdsourcing vs.outsourcing p work can come from an

undefined public; it includes a mix of bottom-up and top-down processes.

Examples: p Linux p Wikipedia p Amazon Mechanical Turk p Patients like me p OpenStreetmap p Wikipedia

Conclusionsp The so-called “smart cities” provide an

advanced technical infrastructure; p However, citizens buy-in and involvement is

paramount; p Civic technologies (or citizen tech) are

providing a platform for local authorities and citizens to collaborate.